Startups

The planned orbital illumination system seeks to deliver sunlight after dark.

Founded just months ago by two repeat Y Combinator founders and a retail veteran, Lemrock is betting that AI agents are becoming the new storefront,  and that brands are nowhere near ready for it. When you ask ChatGPT or Perplexity which running shoes to buy, someone has to make sure the right brands show up, […] This story continues at The Next Web

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Translucent, a health care finance startup that helps hospitals improve cash management, raised a $27M Series A led by GV, after a $7M seed in August 2024  —  Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet  —  Jack O'Hara has seen a hospital shut down.  —  It happens via blurry paperwork and running out of time.

Robinhood Ventures Fund I (NYSE:RVI) is one of the stocks on which Jim Cramer expressed his thoughts. Cramer mentioned the stock during the episode and remarked: Let me put it bluntly. When Robinhood was offering shares of RVI at $25 in the IPO, investors were buying into the fund at face value. In other words, […]

Anna Heim / TechCrunch: Paris-based digital health insurance startup Alan raised €100M led by Index Ventures at a €5B valuation, up from €4B after raising €173M in September 2024  —  30% of European unicorns may have lost their billion-dollar status, but not Alan.

Founded in 2024, Outpost acts as the legally liable entity for cross-border payments, tax, and compliance, so merchants don’t have to. Ribbit led the Series A. Selling across borders has always been technically possible and operationally punishing. The payments fail more often. The tax obligations multiply. The audit risk accumulates in ways that are expensive […] This story continues at The Next Web

The pan-European VC firm has held its first close at €70M for Fund III, backed by Germany’s KfW, Spain’s SETT, and a network of family offices, with a mandate to find European companies building on the AI wave. Samaipata, the pan-European venture capital firm founded in Madrid in 2016, has launched its third fund with […] This story continues at The Next Web

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal: A look at Aaru, a startup founded by teens that uses AI agents to simulate human responses for product development, polling, and more, recently valued at $1B  —  The team behind Aaru is attracting brands including McDonald's and EY by betting AI bots can predict human behavior better than humans can

Listeners rated a Chinese startup's AI voices more realistic and trustworthy than those from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

Cortical Labs is building two data centres that will house its neuron-filled chips. The technology is still in the very early stages of development

Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, who directed the COVID vaccine maker’s rise to prominence, will helm an as-yet-unnamed company dedicated to mRNA discovery work.

Investing in a tech startup can feel exciting, hopeful, and slightly terrifying at the same time. Many investors

AI scribe company Nabla aims to be much more by using tech from Yann LeCun's new startup AMI, which just raised $1 billion.

Jake Rudnitsky / Bloomberg: Israeli startup Jazz, which uses AI agents to tackle data loss prevention, raised $61M across seed and Series A led by Glilot and Team8, and has 15 paying users  —  Israel's Jazz raised $61 million in funding to create a platform that uses artificial intelligence to tackle data loss prevention.

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg: Swedish legal AI startup Legora raised a $550M Series D led by Accel, tripling its valuation to $5.55B since its October 2025 raise, as it expands in the US  —  Swedish legal artificial intelligence startup Legora has raised $550 million in a Series D funding round led by Accel …

The Colorado company Lux Aeterna wants to help open up the space economy with a fleet of fully reusable satellites, and it just raised to some money to help make that happen.

Swiss startup Seprify has raised €13.4 million to scale a cellulose-based alternative to one of the most widely used, and increasingly banned, industrial whiteners on the planet. IKEA is backing it. Somewhere in Southeast Asia, a small beetle called Cyphochilus produces the whitest surface found in nature, not through pigment, but through the microscopic structure […] This story continues at The Next Web

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: AI networking equipment startup Eridu emerges from stealth and raised a $200M Series A led by Socratic, John Doerr, and more, taking its total funding to $230M  —  Drew Perkins has been inventing computer network tech and building startups since the dawn of the internet age.

The San Francisco firm has closed its third fund at $114 million, its largest to date, betting that AI and biology are now inseparable, and that the founders who understand both will build the companies that matter most. Lindy Fishburne started Breakout in a somewhat unusual place: inside the Thiel Foundation, running a grant programme […] This story continues at The Next Web

ION Storage Systems says it has hit a key milestone in bringing solid-state batteries out of the lab and into real-world use. more…

US regulators have approved eight pilot programs across 26 states that will allow Archer, Joby and other eVTOL companies to finally start testing aircraft this summer, according to a US Department of Transportation (DoT) press release. That will allow those manufacturers to run trials for use cases like urban air taxi services, regional passenger transportation, cargo, emergency medical operations and autonomous flight technology.  The new projects were made possible by the White House's Advanced Air Mobility and eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (e-IPP) approved last year to allow certification for such aircraft to progress after being stuck in the mud for years. "By safely testing the deployment of these futuristic air taxis and other AAM vehicles, we can fundamentally improve how the traveling public and products move," US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at the time.  Other FAA aircraft partners include Beta, Electra, Elroy Air, Wisk, Ampaire and Reliable

Samantha Subin / CNBC: AI cybersecurity startup Armadin, started by Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia to build AI agents, raised ~$190M led by Accel; Google bought Mandiant for $5.4B  —  Four years ago Kevin Mandia agreed to sell his cybersecurity company Mandiant to Google for $5.4 billion.  Now he's back in the game, with Google's help.

Eric Trump said drones are a "much better investment" as he and Donald Trump Jr. back drone startup Powerus, which plans to go public via a merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings Inc to capitalize on rising Pentagon demand following the U.S. ban on new Chinese drones. Importance Rank:  1 read more

Arielle Pardes / Wired: How AI may disrupt venture capital, from making it easier and cheaper to start software companies, to agentic investors analyzing startup pitch decks and teams  —  VCs are betting that artificial intelligence will disrupt nearly every industry in the world.  Are they prepared for it to disrupt their own?

Instead of rushing to pitch investors, today's most successful founders are focusing on building and validating their product first.

ReVision Implant gets FDA Breakthrough Device nod for neural interface designed to restore vision by directly stimulating the visual cortex. Hot on the heels of Science Corp landing a massive funding round to commercialize its retinal implant technology, Belgian neurotech ReVision Implant today announced it has received Breakthrough Device designation from the US FDA for […] The post Startup targets ‘untreatable blindness’ with bionic eye system appeared first on Longevity.Technology.

There’s more than one way to fix a broken gene, and a new startup believes that a tool for altering large swaths of RNA code, rather than the underlying DNA, could be ...

San Francisco-based Aikido Technologies says its concept combines three things the AI boom desperately needs right now: power, cooling, and space.Read Entire Article

VCs are betting that artificial intelligence will disrupt nearly every industry in the world. Are they prepared for it to disrupt their own?

Offshore wind turbines could house up to a 12-megawatt data center, drawing power directly from the winds blowing on the sea while using the cold ocean water for cooling.

AI costs surge for startup 8090 as Chamath Palihapitiya warns of inefficient usage and expensive tools like Cursor. Importance Rank:  1 read more

Startups must prioritize their foundations just as much as their innovative capabilities to achieve these expectations.

Christina Kyriasoglou / Bloomberg: German quick grocery delivery startup Flink raised $100M led by Prosus, a source says at a $900M valuation; Flink was reportedly valued at $5B in May 2022  —  Flink SE raised funds in a round that values the firm at $900 million, in a sign that the grocery delivery startup has stabilized …

Jennifer Elias / CNBC: Google joins Microsoft in saying it will keep working with Anthropic on non-defense projects after the DOD designated the startup a supply chain risk  —  Google said it will continue offering Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology for clients, excluding for defense work …

Manya Saini / Reuters: Robinhood debuts its $658.4M venture fund on the NYSE, pricing the IPO at $25 per share, offering retail investors access to private companies like Databricks  —  Robinhood (HOOD.O) debuted its flagship $658.4 million venture fund on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday …

In 2026, entrepreneurship is surging, with new businesses forming nationwide and founders reporting strong optimism for growth.

Hayden AI also claims co-founder improperly sold over $1.2M in stock.

The Stockholm company has spent six years building infrastructure that ensures enterprise data is actually fit for AI, and it has just secured $30M to make that case globally. The pattern is familiar to anyone who has spent time around enterprise technology: a company announces an ambitious AI programme, spends months on pilots, and then quietly […] This story continues at The Next Web

The neutral-atom quantum computing company, co-founded by Nobel laureate Alain Aspect, has announced a business combination with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II, with the deal expected to close in the second half of 2026. When Alain Aspect shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022, the citation concerned experiments performed decades earlier, precise measurements of quantum […] This story continues at The Next Web

InterPositive, a stealth company Affleck founded in 2022 and never publicly acknowledged, builds post-production AI tools trained on real footage rather than text prompts. Netflix is acquiring it just as Hollywood unions sit down for a new round of contract talks. For four years, Ben Affleck has been running a technology company that nobody in […] This story continues at The Next Web

LONDON – In-orbit services provider Infinite Orbits announced plans March 3 to acquireLondon-based in-orbit servicing and manufacturing startup Lunasa, marking a step in the company’s expansion into the United Kingdom.  The acquisition, the value of which the companies didn’t disclose, will bring together the Infinite Orbits’ and Lunasa’s investments into complementary spacecraft rendezvous and life […] The post Infinite Orbits acquires UK startup Lunasa to expand satellite servicing capabilities appeared first on SpaceNews.

Netflix and Ben Affleck are going into business together, with the streaming giant acquiring an AI tools company co-founded by the Cambridge native. The post Netflix acquires Ben Affleck’s AI startup InterPositive appeared first on Boston.com.

Netflix has acquired an AI filmmaking startup called InterPositive, according to a report by Variety. This is a company that was founded by actor Ben Affleck back in 2022. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it. Affleck has been operating the company in stealth mode for the past few years, so this is pretty much it's big coming-out party. The terms of the acquisition haven't been disclosed, but Affleck will remain on as a senior advisor to Netflix. Additionally, the entire staff will be absorbed into the streaming platform. Affleck says he started the company after "observing the early rise of AI in production" and realizing how the "models came up short." The company makes tools that generate AI models based on an existing production's dailies. This lets filmmakers use the model in the post-production process to do stuff like mix and color, relight shots and add visual effects. Affleck adds that this tech is "not about

Though Netflix lost the war for Warner Bros., it has just bought an AI startup from the internet's favorite Dunkin' Donuts aficionado. Today, Netflix announced that it has acquired InterPositive, Ben Affleck's AI company that specializes in tools for film and television production. The deal will see all 16 of InterPositive's current team of engineers and researchers move over to Netflix. Affleck is also set to join the streamer as a senior adviser. In a statement about the acquisition and his reasons for founding InterPositive in 2022, Affleck said he was inspired to get into the tech space after "observing the early rise of AI in producti … Read the full story at The Verge.

Smart ring maker Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a company that specializes in gesture recognition for wearables. The Finnish startup uses smartwatches and wristbands as examples of products that benefit from its technology, but Oura will clearly be looking to incorporate it into its rings, in theory allowing you to control your connected devices with hand movements. Oura said in a press release that the deal sees it inherit an "exceptional team of AI architects and builders from Doublepoint," including Doublepoint's four founders. The newly-acquired company will remain in its native Helsinki, where it will work with Oura’s international teams. It added that Doublepoint’s expertise in helping devices register subtle hand movements will be key, as nobody wearing a smart ring is going to engage with gesture control if they have to thrash their hand around like a conductor. Oura says it believes that the next generation of wearable AI-powered tech will use a combination of

Japanese startup Space One aborted the launch of its Kairos rocket shortly after liftoff, ending its attempt to become the country’s first private company to put a satellite into orbit.

Early-stage startups don't fail from lack of effort — they fail by scaling sales and GTM before they've earned the right to grow.

Aptera says it finished building the first solar-powered car on its low-volume assembly line.

Ike Swetlitz / Bloomberg: Brain tech startup Science Corp. raised $230M, a source says at a $1.25B valuation, bringing total raised to $489M, to commercialize its implant for blindness  —  Neurotechnology company Science Corp. raised $230 million from investors to commercialize its implant for blindness and develop even more advanced brain devices.

Atavistik Bio is using the cash to develop “allosteric” medicines it believes can offer precise impact on diseases like myelofibrosis and the blood condition HHT.

The race to power AI has produced some wild ideas. Launching servers into orbit to harvest round-the-clock solar

Mainland China and Hong Kong should ease listing rules for biotechnology companies and lower takeover thresholds for listed firms to capitalise on renewed foreign interest in the healthcare sector, venture capitalist Nisa Leung said. “Besides artificial intelligence, Premier Li Qiang also highlighted biomedicine in the ‘two sessions’ annual government work report,” said Leung, a former managing partner at Qiming Venture Partners, speaking in a sideline interview during China’s annual meetings of...

A Japanese startup's third attempt to put a satellite in orbit failed on Thursday after its rocket spiraled back to Earth shortly after takeoff.

Ivan Levingston / Financial Times: A look at Munich's UnternehmerTUM, which tops the FT ranking of Europe's startup hubs for a third straight year and has supported 1,000+ companies since 2002  —  Centre tops the FT's ranking of Europe's leading start-up hubs for the third time  —  A trip to Stanford University …

Michael Dempsey / Financial Times: A look at Lisbon's Unicorn Factory, a startup hub where 300 businesses joined in 2025 vs. 250 in 2024; 17 unicorns have moved to Lisbon since hub's 2022 launch  —  Hubs in Lisbon, Porto and Braga nurture new businesses as they look to expand  —  Carlos Moedas admits his career has taken an unexpected turn.

Orlando Crowcroft / Financial Times: Many of Stockholm's thriving tech businesses consider relocating as they look to scale up, amid growing US interest in Swedish AI startups Lovable and Legora  —  Many of Stockholm's thriving tech businesses consider relocating as they look to scale up  —  Ask anyone in Stockholm to account …

Aikido Technologies has come up with a new way to bring renewable energy to the AI industry.

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg: Pasqal, a French startup that builds quantum processors using neutral atom technology, plans to go public via a SPAC merger at a $2B pre-money valuation  —  Pasqal Holding SAS agreed to merge with a blank-check firm in a deal that values the combined company at $2 billion pre-money …

TerraPower, a start-up founded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, is set to build a new kind of nuclear power plant in Wyoming

Forge Global lists five late-stage companies, nicknamed "soonicorns" that have the potential to quickly reach unicorn status. Importance Rank:  1 read more

Craig Crews has incubated some notable biotech companies this century, and hundreds of thousands of blood cancer patients have benefited from a medicine with roots in his Yale lab. His lab’s discoveries, particularly in induced ...

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The firm behind the $183 billion USDT stablecoin is expanding beyond its crypto roots to longevity and artificial intelligence.

Building with modern AI models has become surprisingly accessible. With the GPT-5.2 API, developers can add advanced reasoning,

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Tom Nugent / Sifted: Self-driving software startup Oxa raised a $103M Series D, with $50M coming from the UK government's National Wealth Fund; Nvidia's NVentures also invested  —  Oxa develops self-driving software for industrial use cases, with customers including BP, DHL and Vantec

Company aims to stitch tens of thousands of GPUs together for more efficient training and inference It's a good time to be an AI chip startup, especially if you happen to specialize in silicon photonics.…

Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg: Sources: Anduril is seeking to raise about $4B in a round co-led by Thrive Capital and a16z, which could nearly double the startup's valuation to ~$60B  —  Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz are co-leading a fundraising round for Anduril Industries Inc …

Former Zomato CEO backs temple-worn wearable to track brain blood flow, signaling a shift from food tech to human performance. When Indian billionaire entrepreneur Deepinder Goyal, best known as the CEO of the food delivery giant Zomato, stepped down in January from the company he co-founded nearly two decades ago, many expected a pause. Instead, […] The post Wearable startup Temple secures $54m for brain monitoring appeared first on Longevity.Technology.

Xsensio combines multiple sensors to continuously analyze biomarkers in interstitial fluid through the skin. Swiss healthtech Xsensio has closed an oversubscribed $7 million Series A round to advance development and clinical validation of its continuous biochemical monitoring technology. The Lausanne-based company is developing a wearable sensing platform designed to sit directly on the skin and […] The post Nanotech startup lands funding for continuous biosensing platform appeared first on Longevity.Technology.

Skyward Wildfire says it can prevent lightning using military chaff, but the research is dubious.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This startup claims it can stop lightning and prevent catastrophic wildfires Startup Skyward Wildfire says it can prevent catastrophic fires by stopping the lightning strikes that ignite them. So far, it hasn’t publicly…

On June 1, 2023, as a sweltering heat wave baked Quebec, thousands of lightning strikes flashed across the province, setting off more than 120 wildfires. The blazes ripped through parched forests and withered grasslands, burned for weeks, and compounded what was rapidly turning into Canada’s worst fire year on record. In the end, nearly 7,000…

South Korea is stepping up efforts to develop its autonomous driving industry, aiming to bring it on par with China and the United States. The most ambitious initiative is to take place in the southwestern city of Gwangju, where the entire city is designated as experimental space for self-driving vehicles, providing an opportunity to develop related technologies and assess prospects of commercial deployment. When the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced the plan anda 60 billion won (around $41 million) investment to deploy 200 autonomous driving vehicles, it drew attention from both automotive and tech sectors — not just because of the scale, but also because the project was expected to spur advances in fields such as artificial intelligence and big data analytics. But as the April deadline the ministry set to select participating companies draws closer, smaller firms and startups are growing increasingly concerned, particularly over vehicle procurement. Hyundai

The funds will allow it to expand further across North Asia, the Middle East, the US & Europe Singapore-based kids tech company myFirst has announced today (Mar 3) that it has raised over US$8 million in its Series A funding round. The round, led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, was conducted in a bid to […]

Going global can turboboost growth but also creates tax risks. Research, planning and expert advice can help you avoid costly mistakes.

ZaiNar claims it can turn standard 5G signals into centimeter level positioning without GPS, new hardware, or handset manufacturer cooperation.

New York Times: A profile of Palmer Luckey and his startup Anduril, which has more than $6B in global contracts, had roughly $2B in revenue last year, and is valued at ~$31B  —  Within minutes of arriving at a security conference with U.S. defense and intelligence officials in December …

Industry recognitions may open doors, but investment follows alignment and measurable impact.

Exiting a business isn't the end — it's the start of something new.

OrganTech researchers identify previously undiscovered cell type needed to regenerate hair follicles in vivo. Japanese regenerative medicine company OrganTech has identified what it describes as the “minimal set” of stem cells required to regenerate fully functional hair follicles in the lab, a finding that could spark new regenerative strategies for hair loss. The Tokyo-based biotech […] The post Japanese startup makes hair follicle regeneration breakthrough appeared first on Longevity.Technology.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes woven into daily life, from chatbots to industrial systems, a quieter concern is emerging. When AI systems make decisions on their own, it is not always clear how those decisions can be verified or who is responsible when something goes wrong. Much of the global AI race has focused on making systems more powerful and capable. Less attention has gone to what happens after deployment, particularly as AI moves beyond cloud servers and into physical environments such as factories, vehicles and infrastructure. In those settings, the ability to trace what an AI system actually did can become critical. One startup exploring this challenge is ArbaLabs, a deep tech company that participated in the 2025 K-Startup Grand Challenge and finished in the final four. ArbaLabs is developing tools designed to verify how AI systems operate on edge devices — machines that run AI locally rather than in centralized data centers. Founder Ashley Reeves describes the

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei defends company's patriotic stance after Trump blacklists it for refusing Pentagon's demand for unrestricted AI use. Importance Rank:  1 read more

$50 billion from Amazon, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $30 billion from SoftBank, with additional investors expected to join as the round progresses.

Venture capital can fuel growth, but raising too early can cost you control and ownership.

Vivtex and Nimbus Therapeutics are working with big pharma to develop the next wave of oral obesity treatments. The post Two Boston startups join the race to create the next major weight-loss drug appeared first on Boston.com.

Christine Wang / Axios: TMTG says it is in talks to spin off Truth Social into a public company, following the close of its previously announced merger with nuclear fusion startup TAE  —  Trump Media & Technology Group said Friday it is in talks to spin off Truth Social into a new publicly traded company.

The Korea-Africa Foundation said Friday it will offer support to 15 Korean startups this year seeking to enter markets in Africa. Under the program aimed at helping startups expand their businesses overseas, the foundation said it will select the startups after accepting applications through March 31. It seeks to select seven companies specializing in climate technologies, such as renewable energy, and eight others in technologies designed to support aging populations. The selected companies will undergo fundraising and other preparatory training before taking part in a four-week acceleration program in their respective African markets.

Business Insider: Sources: two members of Thinking Machines Lab's founding team, Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak, left the startup and have been working at Meta for a few weeks  —  - Two founding team members left Thinking Machines Lab for Meta in recent weeks.  — The exits add to a wave of departures from the high-profile $12 billion AI startup.

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Driverless truck startup Einride raised a $113M PIPE at a $1.35B pre-money valuation, down from $1.8B initially attached to its upcoming SPAC deal  —  Einride has secured an oversubscribed $113 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) ahead of its public debut that's expected for the first half of 2026.

Nick Huber / Financial Times: Several UK consultants have left large firms to start AI consultancy startups, as growth in the country's AI consulting sector outpaces the broader market  —  A number of consultants have left big firms to create their own software companies to automate common and repetitive work

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: London-based enterprise coding startup SolveAI raised a $45M Series A led by GV in November 2025 and a $5M pre-seed led by Accel in August 2025  —  Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet  —  In just eight months of existence, SolveAI has raised $50 million.

Novo Nordisk announced it had signed a deal with Vivtex, a biotech co-founded by MIT professor Robert Langer, to develop oral obesity and diabetes drugs.

BreezeBio, a startup founded a decade ago to develop new delivery technologies for genetic medicines, has raised $60 million to start clinical trials of its first program, it announced Wednesday. The therapy is meant to ...

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: A look at Motif Technologies and Upstage, South Korean AI startups competing with SK Group and LG in the race for a national AI foundation model  —  Motif Technologies and Upstage take on SK and LG in the race for a national AI foundation model.  —  While pursuing his doctorate in mathematics …

Financial Times: London-based self-driving startup Wayve raised a $1.2B Series D at an $8.6B post-money valuation, with Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Nissan among investors  —  Self-driving group valued at $8.6bn as it gears up to launch robotaxi service in London this year